FAQ

Curvature has provided pre-owned equipment to more than 15,000 organizations worldwide, including Fortune 500 companies, small and mid-sized businesses, telecommunications providers, financial institutions, government agencies, educational institutions, and healthcare organizations. Our largest vertical markets include manufacturing, healthcare, business services, retail and consumer services, software, finance, and technology integrators.

In carrier networks, where uptime is critical, our equipment is often deployed in production environments. Across enterprises, common use cases include supporting frontline services, expanding network infrastructure, extending the life of existing systems, building out spares inventories, running test environments, and supporting disaster recovery.

In a recent study of 400 Curvature customers, nearly 80% reported using their purchases in production environments, and 66% used the equipment specifically for network expansion projects.

All equipment sold by Curvature is considered “pre-owned,” meaning the equipment was initially sold by the manufacturer or an authorized reseller and is now being resold by us. Some of the inventory is “used,” and some equipment has been resold without being used at all. For any products labeled “used,” Curvature provides a full inspection, cleaning, testing and reconditioning to return the equipment to as close to its original condition as possible. In cases where only minor repairs or cosmetic improvements are needed, equipment is labeled as “refurbished.” Our goal is to return equipment to “like new” condition whenever possible while still offering exceptional savings of between 50 and 90% off manufacturers’ list prices.

“New-surplus” equipment has never been used and may also be described to reflect the condition of its packaging. Equipment that is “new/open box” may range in condition from mint to two or more years old, already resold multiple times, but has never been used. “New/in box” typically denotes the product is from the manufacturer’s distribution channel with its original tape unopened. In either of these cases, Curvature opens the boxes to verify the contents and ensure equipment meets specifications.

Nearly all servers, storage, and networking equipment, can be found for sale on the secondary market. Our inventory is typically market-driven, so we’re aggressively pursuing the top 100 to 200 products to provide customers with the most popular equipment in 24 to 48 hours. With Curvature contacts and resources in many different verticals, we are typically able to deliver even specialized or hard-to-find items within weeks, not months.

Curvature leads the secondary market industry with having access to over $100 million in global inventory. Curvature’s stock is responsive to its customers. That’s why we always try to have a wide range of equipment available. We maintain a database of more than 2,000 resources globally paired with state-of-the-art databases for tracking all of our inventory worldwide. As a result, Curvature typically has the most popular and hard-to-find networking items in stock and ready to ship when you need them.

Most of our inventory is stocked by many of our own customers. For instance, when a company upgrades their environment, cancels a project or closes a location, Curvature is there to buy surplus equipment or provide trade-in credit toward a future purchase. We’re also available to source equipment from system integrators who may purchase gear for clients only to see the project get canceled or changed. The rest of our inventory is acquired from equipment resellers.

Curvature understands that networks are mission critical for any business, and our warranty is designed with uptime and agility in mind. Curvature offers a limited lifetime warranty on all pre-owned manufacturer-branded equipment and all new Curvature Brand equipment. For as long as you own the equipment, if you experience equipment failure, our technical engineering support teams will do everything they can to remedy the problem. Whether we can solve it over the phone or need to send a replacement piece your way for next-business-day delivery, our team will keep latency and downtime to a minimum.

Through our parent company, Park Place Technologies, we provide support to over 21,500 customers across the globe, including half of the Fortune 500, providing consistent results while retaining the agility to meet the ever-changing customer needs. By removing pain points and identifying areas to improve both quality and efficiency throughout our relationship, we’re here to support you.

Network Maintenance: We provide world-class optimization, support, and network maintenance services for OEMs like Cisco, Brocade, and HPE, whether it’s your wireless access point, fiber channel switch, or firewall appliance.

Server Maintenance: We offer global service and support for data center server equipment for OEMs like Dell, IBM, Intel, and HPE, from x86 servers to UNIX environments. Our server maintenance contracts provide the attention you need to keep your server equipment up and running.

Storage Maintenance: We provide exceptional global service and support for data center storage hardware for OEMs like EMC, Hitachi, and NetApp. We offer flexible service level agreements to meet your organization’s storage lifecycle management needs, as well as global call centers available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Hyperconverged Infrastructure Hardware Maintenance: We offer maintenance, as well as Software Technical Support for HCI hypervisors and operating system software packages.

The key benefits of “pre-owned” products from Curvature are substantial savings and expedited delivery. In a time when manufacturers can take 10 to 80 days to fulfill orders, Curvature can achieve same day shipping on most in-stock products because of its access to multi-million dollar global inventory of popular, specialized, and hard-to-find products. Additionally, companies buying pre-owned equipment from us can save as much as 75% off manufacturers’ list prices.

There is counterfeit equipment in the market, particularly with dominant brands like Cisco, but Curvature has seen counterfeiting decrease in recent years. In the effort to eradicate counterfeit equipment, Curvature has a Counterfeit Abatement Program (CAP). CAP includes a strict methodology for identifying suspect equipment, quarantining it for detailed inspection, documenting evolving counterfeiting techniques, and maintaining a comprehensive knowledge base by Curvature quality technicians. Our technicians are globally ensuring that products are authentic and meet factory specifications.

To help fight this battle industry-wide, Curvature is a founding member of the Used Networking Equipment Dealer Association (UNEDA). Part of this method’s charter is to help ensure that counterfeit detection practices are shared among all the over 300 members. Awareness among resellers and customers is the best way to fight counterfeiters, and we’re continually striving to eradicate counterfeit products. We are also a Certified Importer. Led by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, C-TPAT is focused on improving global supply chain security with respect to terrorism.